Dark Maze

her hips.
    When we finally got to the bodega, Neglio touched my arm before I could leave the car. “Try to understand Qne tittle thing, if nothing else. My world’s just as real as yours, Hock. Okay?”
    I was certainly willing to concede him the point. “Yeah okay.”
    “So try thinking my way. This new mayor of ours— whether or not you even voted—you remember how he damn near lost the election to that Italian twerp of a federal D.A., right? The one with the really bad comb-over? The one with all those cockamamie law-and-order speeches?“
    “Come, come, Tomassino Neglio. Such talk about a paisano. ”
    “Never mind that. The thing is, you think cops have interference from City Hall now? Can you imagine what it would be from an ex-D.A.?”
    Again I conceded.
    “So you see how there’s no harm in helping our guy’s image? Which is all it is—image. We help the mayor, the mayor stays oif our backs when it really counts.”
    There was a certain attractive logic to what Neglio was saying. But I kept my doubts firmly in mind, which is something that only comes natural after a few years in my trade.
    “Let’s get this straight,” I said. “Supposing our boy keeps going off his nut like he is, and he wipes out a few more solid citizens, and the tabloids put two and two together and have a field day... ”
    “Oh, they will. Unless you think you can poke your boy tonight and be done with it.”
    “Well, probably not.”
    “No.”
    “So down the line, when I’m ready to take down my man, you want me to wait for the camera crew and the mayor’s limo?”
    “Crudely put, but that’s more or less it.”
    “And if I do this, you’re going to set me up downtown? And see me to a pay bump?” It occurred to me that I might talk this over with Ruby.
    “See? Not so bad, right?”
    “What’s in it for you? Are you gunning for Senior Inspector? Or Super Chief so you can get a bigger car and a brighter flunky?”
    The driver squawked again. Neither one of us paid him any attention.
    Neglio said to me, “Could it happen to two nicer guys?“
    “What are you, lonely down there at headquarters? Is that why you’d want me around, to share the misery?”
    “It’s a reward—”
    “Try thinking my way,” I interrupted. “Taking some desk job down there with you would be like retirement for me. Only you probably wouldn’t allow me to go to the ball park every day.”
    “Christ, Hock! With all due respect. .
    “Yeah, let’s keep this respectful. Which means I do want my pension one fine day, but I also want to be the one who says when I’m ready to collect. It also means I get to make my own goddamn collars my own goddamn way!”
    I stepped out of the car as a fine flourish to dressing down the boss. The bodega did not have any customers inside, but the gates were not down yet and the place looked open still. Picasso’s terrified pig was gone from the window, but there was something else in its place, something in calcimine.
    Neglio rolled down a window of the car and barked, “Hock, get over here, and that’s a goddamn order!”
    So I walked on over, but I took my time. Neglio leaned out the window with his wing-collar shirt and black bow tie and his teeth were clenched and he said, “I could have you up on insubordination charges first thing in the morning, Hock. Remember that. You push me, and you’ll learn how there’s good opportunities in life—and then there are bad ones.“
    “I’m on furlough, remember that? And you’re way out of hounds interfering with an officer. So maybe this insubordinate conversation never happened. So don’t bust my chops, I’ve got work to do.”
    Neglio made some growling noises.
    “Besides which, I’m only handling this job because you and your buddy the mayor have decided I’m the only cop you got who might clear it before we get some real serious panic going in this town,” I said. “Which, by the way, reminds me, I’m working on my own clock—your words.“
    “Well, just what can we do about that?” Neglio said, smiling.
    “I’ll make you one little deal tonight, just so you can keep your buddy happy. You shuffle the paper and get me back on the city’s clock, and I’ll think about it.”
    “About the mayor?”
    “I’ll think, I won’t promise.”
    “Deal.”
    Neglio rolled up his window, a happy man for effecting a minor corruption. He waved, then his car lurched off the curb and crossed the avenue and turned east up at Forty-ninth